FILE LED SHOW 2017

Possible Dialogs

FILE LED SHOW
Electronic Language International Festival

 

 

The FILE LED Show 2017: Possible Dialogs presents 18 works at SESI-SP’s Digital Art Gallery grouped into three distinct exhibitions which explore different artistic expressions – Algorithm Cinema, the Faces Project, and a collaboration between FILE and the University of New York`s campus in Abu Dhabi. The works shown on the facade of the building, which has been transformed into a giant LED screen,  emphasize the dialog that exists between the poetic and the material upon which the image is displayed, where the physical support for an image is an essential conceptual component – even so when the image is ephemeral.
Algorithm Cinema includes “Daemon” by the Austrian artist Hansi Raber and the German Andreas Lutz, “Saccade”, from the Turkish collective Ouchhh Studio and “Algo_light” by the Spaniard Servando Barreiro. Similar to the work of the vanguard filmmakers of abstract cinema, these artists have combined different forms that impact on the viewer by creating a tension between light and dark, and between geometric and organic figures. “Daemon” refers to the structural cinematic experiments of Peter Kubelka or Tony Conrad. In the video, as in “Arnulf Rainer” (1960) and “The Flicker” (1966), intermittent lights cause passers-by on Paulista Avenue to examine the way that these visual stimuli interact with their bodies. The circular elements of “Algo_light” echo films that used a similar format, such as “Samadhi” (1967), by Jordan Belson. But Belson’s intent to create a profound meditative state in the viewer is not possible on the street. In the context of the city, where we are subject to any number of visual, sonoric and olfactory stimuli, the very act of perception of the art surrounding us is the result of our positioning ourselves regarding the city. It is a way of facing it that is an escape from the alienation of the day to day, which is sensitive to the nuances of what is happening around us. “Saccade” emerges as a combination of “Daemon” and “Algo_light”, in the way it fuses flashing lights with different geometric and organic forms. These artists’ refer to important historical works of experimental cinema, using recent techniques for the generation of digital images. Algorithm Cinema results, in this way, in a new means of expression that dialogs directly with the arts which came before it.
The Faces Project follows a similar logic, combining elements from the history of art with contemporary techniques for generating images. It is a public, large-scale display of adaptations of ten portraits originally conceived by the Slovakian artist Adam Pizurny as GIFs. Pizurny appropriates 3D scans found on the internet, modifying them digitally to create animations that deconstruct the original faces. Some faces transform into flying, textile masks, while others dissolve into bubbles or watery waves. Others are merged with external elements, fragmented or overlaid, in a way that recalls the cubist paintings of Picasso or Braque. The portrait, such a fundamental artistic form, moves from the internet browser to the facade of the building, in a dialog with the many and different faces that pass by on the streets of the city every day.
As well as the passers-by, Paulista Avenue also hosts five projects by young artists from Turkey, Sri Lanka, Peru, Dubai, the United States, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. The works, which were made specially for this exhibition in a partnership with the University of New York Abu Dhabi, include “Droplet”, by Alia Alharmi, “Evolving Roots”, by Ekin Basaran, “Dance of Change”, by Harshini J. Karunaratne, “Window”, by Nahil Ali Memon, and “Crossroads”, by Felix Hardmood Beck and Zlatan Filipovic. The artists explore themes such as time, the dynamic between nature and technology, the image in movement, corporal expression, and architecture. The projection of the images on the façade adds a powerful element to the poetics of the works and serves as a metaphor for everyday actions, including the conflict between different ways of living and our need to learn to tolerate difference.
The three exhibitions that form FILE LED Show 2017: Possible Dialogs show that adapting to a particular environment, such as the use of a technology as an artistic language, a distinctive support for the image or the day-to-day experience of both public and private places, always requires an effort to reconcile the old and the new; for neither replaces the other but must learn to dialog between them. The public space of the building’s facade is able to house different voices with which a conversation with the passers-by becomes possible through art.

Fernanda Almeida
FILE LED Show 2017 Curator